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English 100 requires students to think critically and respond in writing to a variety of readings and to generate, revise and edit texts of their own. The sections of English 100 listed below have special themes and are open to all students required to register for English 100. Requirements for all English 100 sections are the same. The sections listed below simply give students the opportunity to explore a variety of writing and reading assignments connected with the announced theme. All sections of English 100 are reading and writing-intensive, carry four hours of academic credit, and require weekly assignments to be completed in the Hortense Parrish Writing Center.
Tim Hacker Literacy as Personal and as Social Transformation
English 100 – 001 MWF 10-10:50 CRN 40535
If we look up the word “literacy” in a dictionary, we’ll find a very simple definition such as “the ability to read and write.” That much is easy, but it raises a more interesting question: how does that ability change the lives of people who have it—and of the lives of people around them?
Our class will look for answers this question. We’ll begin by reading literacy narratives by famous Americans such as Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, and Malcolm X. As we work throughout the semester, we’ll see how school helps (or hinders!) literacy. We’ll end by reading Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea, which is about the Central Asia Initiative—Mortenson’s attempt to bring literacy to the girls and young women of Afghanistan. As we read these accounts, we’ll write about them . . . and about our own experiences with literacy.
A big part of literacy now is technology; we no longer rely on written or printed words on paper alone to communicate. Students in this class will write, store, and revise papers electronically, and they will get help with the mechanical features of their writing—spelling, punctuation, and grammar—through an online handbook.
Heidi Huse Knowledge is Power
English 100 - 006 TR 9:30-10:45 CRN 40605
One aspect of effective oral, digital, and print communication is engaging knowledgeably w/ the world around us. In order to be successfully engaged and globally aware in our complex world requires us to be not only able to read but fully comprehend what we are reading, in order for us to know how to respond, with our own words or actions. Our primary reader will be the anthology Building Academic Literacy, but we will also read a full book-length work and watch a film centered on education. Students will write literacy memoirs and build a multi-media electronic portfolio of the texts they produce over the semester. Weekly Writing Center attendance is required.
Pam Davis Challenges Faced and Conquered
English 100 -- 005 MW 3:30—4:45 CRN 40590
English 100 – 008 TR 1—2:15 CRN 40630
English 100 – 009 TR 4—5:15 CRN 40648
In this first-semester of the 100-110-112 composition track, this course will guide freshmen to read about those who have faced and conquered personal challenges. We will use their inspiring stories to guide our thinking and writing. A four-hour course, we require students to spend an hour in the Writing Center each week. Also this class will participate in a department emphasis to begin an e-portfolio and incorporate various facets of media in our writing, as well as add our writing to media. Computer experts, know-littles, and everyone in-between are welcome. Each will face his own challenge and live to write about it. Come prepared to learn as we all grow as thinkers and writers in twenty-first century technology.
The sections of English 111 listed below have special themes and are open to all students. Requirements for all English 111 sections are the same. These sections give you the opportunity to explore a variety of writing and reading assignments connected with the announced theme. All sections of English 111 are reading-intensive. In DM sections, students will be joined by other students from a regional high school through interactive television. The high school students are taking the course for dual high school and college credit.
Tim Hacker Revising the Holocaust: Victimhood
English 111-DM1 MWF 8:00-8:50 CRN 40547
Most of us are familiar with a Holocaust “story” that goes like this: during the Nazi occupation of Western and Central Europe during World War II, Jews were confined to cities or neighborhoods of cities. They were then transported by train to concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, where they were either gassed on arrival or worked to death. We see it as cold, remorseless, impersonal, assembly-line destruction.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain in the early 1990s, however, the story of the Holocaust has been revised because of new access to archives in Eastern Europe. The nature of the killing there has shifted the focus from structures—the bureaucracy that operated the railroads and concentration camps—to a new understanding based on participant roles. Who was—and what does it mean to be—a perpetrator of the Holocaust? A rescuer? A bystander?
Our class will look specifically at one category of Holocaust participants: the victims. We’ll work to get answers to these questions: who were the victims, and what were their varied responses to the genocide directed at them? We’ll begin with an overview of the Holocaust, Doris Bergen’s War and Genocide. Then we’ll read Imre Kertesz’s Fatelessness; Louis Begley’s Wartime Lies; and Maus, by Art Spiegelman; as well as selections by Jean Amery, Primo Levi, and Nechama Tec. As a class we’ll discuss and write six papers in response to these works.
This section will be joined via interaction television by students from Camden Central High School who take the course for dual credit.
Daniel Pigg Is Chivalry Dead: Love and Romance Through the Ages
English 111-DM2 MWF 8:00-8:50 CRN 40666
In this 111 section, we will look at a variety of texts that in some way touch on the issue of chivalric behavior, beginning with Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur and including several plays, poems, and films up to the present day. The world of chivalry is often defined by the representation of Arthur’s world of knighthood, hence the reason for our beginning with the Middle Ages. We will look at how the concept has changed in the next five hundred years by examining Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and The Tempest, Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, and a couple of twentieth-century films such as Ever After. We will find that chivalry isn’t dead; it has merely taken on a different form. Students in this course will also be joined by students from Lake County High School via distance learning.
David Williams Justice and Society: From Natural Law to Jurisprudence
English 111-DM3 MWF 8:00-8:50 CRN 40677
English 111- 004 MWF 9:00-9:50 CRN 40525
English 111-008 MWF 10:00-10:50 CRN 40538
This writing-intensive course will explore different concepts of law and justice, from natural law (rules of behavior and justice derived from nature) to positive law (the jurisprudence, or theory and philosophy of law of a given political community). We will discuss the relationship between justice and jurisprudence, and consider how concepts of each have evolved over time. Attention will be given to the way that the media and pop culture represent law and justice. This course may be of particular interest to students who aspire to careers in law, criminal justice, or public service. Readings will include Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
Leslie LaChance Writing People, Writing Places
English 111-DM4 MWF 10:00-10:50 CRN 40669
This section of English 111 is devoted to the topic of community. We will read and write about life in small towns and big cities, about neighborhoods and families, schools, leadership, sense of place, identity, leaving home and coming back. Students in this course will write formal academic essays and short response papers about course materials. Our texts will include a collection of essays, short stories, a graphic novel, a memoir and poems. Main campus students will be joined by students from Henry County High School via interactive television.
D. Carithers Words not Bombs: Literacy for Peace and Change
English 111 – 021 TR 9:30-10:45 CRN 40606
Sometimes we don’t realize how good we have it in the United States, where almost all boys and girls go to school and learn to read and write. But in developing countries, this is not the case, especially for girls. Taking a look at the state of education in countries like Afghanistan is a good way to reevaluate the opportunities we have here. This course will focus on the power of literacy in our lives and those of a generation of kids given educational opportunities for the first time. We will write often and in various genres, including in-class writing, reading-response journals, and a series of essays, and we will bring it all together in an electronic portfolio. We will read a variety of texts on the subject, including one man’s heroic quest to build schools where no person has dared before: Greg Mortenson’s Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Education in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Jeffrey Longacre Literary Quests and Flights of Fancy: Journeys Into the Imagination
English 111- 023 TR 9:30-10:45 CRN 40608
English 111- 027 TR 11:00-12:15 CRN 40621
Whether its subject is a knight on a crusade or a hitchhiker drawn by the allure of the open road, the journey or the quest narrative is one of the most enduring and captivating subjects in literature. Through a focus on the literature of the quest, this course will provide students with the opportunity to read, appreciate, and analyze representative works of literature. Since ideas are not complete until they find the proper form of expression, students will also learn how to move from comprehension and appreciation to expression by learning how to effectively write about literature at the college level. Along the way, students will become stronger critical readers and critical writers in general. And these are the kinds of transferrable skills that everybody needs for Gen. Ed. classes, upper-division classes, and in the professional world; besides it’s fun (seriously)! So, come on a quest with us. Who knows, you may even learn something about yourself.
Mattie Davenport Scientific Integrity
English 111-037 MWF 3:00-3:50 CRN 40671
The question of scientific integrity (Just because we can, does that mean we should?) has been bouncing around for ages. Since humankind began trying to manipulate nature, we have always wondered if it is right to interfere with the assumed order of things for the benefit of our comfort, amusement, or glory. A popular genre for this issue is science fiction, and this class will explore several works (such as Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park) that speculate the end result of fooling with nature. We will also explore non-fiction media to have a better understanding of how what was once science fiction is now reality, and the question remains, often unanswered, in the face of human progress. Finally, the class will turn to possible solutions (like Janine Benyus’s Biomimicry) to coexisting with our habitat while still progressing as a species. By the end of the course, students should be better capable of evaluating and writing about the world around them while thinking critically about our choices as Earth’s inhabitants.
The English 111 section listed below is open to students with an Enhanced ACT score in English of 28 or above. Honors English is not more difficult than the standard English 111 classes; rather, the courses are approached differently and may include enrichment activities that are not available in regular English 111 classes.
John Glass Great Ideas and Where to Get Them
English 111H-001 MWF 9-9:50 CRN 40529
English 111H-002 MWF 1-1:50 CRN 40572
Students in English 111H 001, 002 will read and discuss works from a range of ancient and modern writers and thinkers. Course materials will introduce students to different genres of writing—essays, poems, short stories, novels. We will consider both the ideas the readings present, and also how to think and write about them clearly and effectively. In-class discussion and written assignments will be guided by overarching concerns for how we know ourselves and learn to judge and make sense of the world, by the question of what it means to be human, and what the true means and ends of education are. Students will be expected to make meaningful contributions to class discussions, and to take on the difficult work of making the good writing they produce still better.
Chris Hill Human Nature and Social Relations
English 111H-003 TR 9:30-10:45 CRN 40611
In this class, we will be focusing on writing in an academic context; materials will include essays from ancient China and Greece; Renaissance Italy; Nineteenth Century England; and Twentieth Century Latin America. We’ll be dipping our feet in streams far apart in time and in place. Our readings will all examine various aspects of social relations: what does it mean to be human? How can we best govern ourselves? What are the true means and ends of education? Students in this course will be asked to do a lot of writing, both in class and out. Since this is a composition course, we will use our readings and discussions as material for writing personal and academic essays. Writing and working within writing groups will occupy a large portion of our time together.
The sections of English 112 listed below have special themes and are open to all students. Requirements for all English 112 sections are the same. These sections give you the opportunity to explore a variety of writing and reading assignments connected with the announced theme. All sections of English 112 are reading-intensive and require a substantial research project. Students enrolling in English 112 need to have completed either English 110 or English 111 with a grade of C or better. In DM sections, students will be joined by other students from a regional high school through interactive television. The high school students are taking the course for dual high school and college credit.
Jeff Stumpo Imagetext
English 112 – 006 MWF 1:00-1:50 CRN 40573
English 112 - 007 MWF 2:00-2:50 CRN 40578
While we tend to put up a barrier between the things we read and the things we look at and call them "texts" and "images," respectively, the fact of the matter is that these elements are constantly intertwined. This class will focus on the connection of words and pictures and place them under the overall heading "imagetexts." The focus of the course is on rhetoric rather than literature, per se, and so our examples will come from a great many areas. Our readings will range from the common and contemporary (advertisements) to the experimental and historical (Zang Tumb Tumb), from subtitles to street signs. A portfolio developed over the length of the semester (and attuned as much as possible to your own interests as they intersect with imagetexts) will track your increasing familiarity and facility with the course's concepts.
Heidi Huse Sustaining Our Planet and Ourselves
English 112- 009 TR 1:00-2:15 CRN 40635
English 112- 010 TR 2:30-3:45 CRN 40644
What does it mean to live ethically and sustainably in a fast-paced, corporate, global consumerist world? What is effective, in-depth research? How can writing help me understand what I research and engage well with others about what I learn from my research? These are all questions we’ll be exploring, using food as our opening topic. Our reading for this adventure will be the thought-provoking anthology Food Inc: How Industrial Food is Making us Sicker, Fatter and Poorer—and What You Can Do about It. Students will research and write argument essays on topics of sustainability, using the reading and writing guide Reading Rhetorically, 3rd edition, to assist with accurate reading and writing about research sources. We’ll also watch the campy 70s environmental apocalypse film Soylent Green and read The Animals’ Lawsuit Against Humanity, an Illustrated 10th Century Iraqi ecological fable, which will serve as the basis for our literary analysis writing.
Pam Davis The Time of our Lives
English 112-011 TR 2:30-3:45 CRN 40645
Having successfully completed ENG 111, students can embark on the time of our lives. This composition class focuses on the amazing lives and times of unforgettable people. We’ll be so involved in reading and writing it may not even seem like work. This research-based class will also include a helpful handbook, Harris’s Using Sources Effectively to guide our research techniques.
We offer several sections of Composition courses off the main campus at UT Martin Centers in Parsons, Ripley and Selmer. These courses are identical in requirements, goals and learning outcomes to the courses offered on the main campus.
Parsons Center
Allen Shull Didactic Literature: Learning, Feeling, Coping
English 111 - PX1 (Parsons Center) TR 11:30-12:45 CRN 40364
Literature portrays humanity--our hopes, our fears, our epiphanies. Through new experience, we learn; however, is learning only experiential, or can lessons be learned through literature? This class focuses not only on learning academic writing, but also on the change that happens when we come to college. With readings in texts not commonly read, students examine not only how they write, but also how they learn, and how their lives change through their experiences.
Through Samuel Johnson's Rasselas, several short Anglo-Saxon poems, and Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, students see how others examine their lives, their past experiences, and deal with their presents and plan for their futures. Attention is paid to these texts and the different cultures they come from, and how those and the students' cultures interact, correspond, and oppose each other.
Additionally, each student selects an additional text to read, of his or her own choice, with which to compare the other texts in the class, as well as their own lives.
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